How #NotInMyName morphed into an anti-Hindu campaign

Recently the so-called “liberals” and self-declared “concerned citizens” of the country came up with a new campaign called #NotInMyName, which purportedly sought to protest against the supposed rise in lynching the country is witnessing after Narendra Modi won the general elections.

The campaign idea was criticised, including here at OpIndia.com, because most of the people associated with the campaign had pre-decided to focus only on “Muslim” victims of lynching incidents, even though victims are from other communities too.

However, some still claimed that the campaign was about lynchings of all sorts, and did not focus on any religion or ideology. This claim was lynched by the mobs that gathered to protest, and it became clear that the campaign was a partisan political propaganda.

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How insensitive and partisan the “protesters” were, was obvious when the following ‘lynch map’ of India was brandished as part of the campaign:

The alleged lynch map of India

As one can see, not only the protesters refused to include public killings of Hindu activists in states like Kerala, they even refused to include incidents where Muslims were killed because they were not seen as “Muslim enough” by Islamist mobs – such as lynchings of an Army jawan and DSP in Kashmir and a Muslim BJP leader who was hacked to death in Karnataka.

Apart from that, it included incidents in Jharkhand, which were known to have no connection with religion, because an almost equal number of Hindus were also killed by local villagers under the same suspicion of child theft. This lie was first spread by Huffington Post, which had later retracted, but the propagandists at the #NotInMyName decided to further the lie.

This map, almost a symbol of the farce that the campaign was, came under criticism on social media:

The ‘Map’ omits any reference to:
Dalit boy burned alive by Muslims in Pune.
Muslim BJP activist beaten to death by Muslim mob in Bangalore. pic.twitter.com/j0X2knmsGG

The tragedy is that despite it being a campaign of hate, the organisers, thanks to their connections in media and the elite class, will be able to paint themselves as “concerned citizens”. An example of how their hold on narrative successfully gets support even for their hate campaigns, was visible when young Bollywood actor Varun Dhawan tweeted in support of it.

I completely support the #NotInMyName movement. It was a peaceful protest and stood for the values of what our country stands for.

Times Now's tweets reflect the general attitude of the Indian elite towards Hindu festivals. While everything negative is associated with Hindu festivals, an aura of celebratory mood is spread on the occasion of Abrahamic festivals.